Claranet acquires three new companies in period of rapid growth

Posted: Wed, 07/05/2014 - 13:28

Claranet has followed up its 2012 acquisitions of Star in the UK and Typhon in France with a wave of new acquisitions with three companies joining the Claranet Group in the last three months. Beginning in February Claranet acquired Echiron, a high-end managed hosting and applications provider in Portugal. This was followed by the acquisition of Grita, a specialist French hosting provider to the healthcare sector in March. Finally, in April Claranet acquired Dutch cloud services provider, NovaData.

Following these acquisitions Claranet has cemented its position as the largest provider of cloud services to the mid-market in Western Europe. Claranet Group will have annual revenues in excess of €160 million (£135 million), circa 800 employees, over 4,500 customers and operations in 6 European countries (France, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and Portugal). Part of Claranet’s ambitious growth strategy is to add additional operational capabilities in different market places.

Echiron was founded in 2000 and is based in Lisbon. It is recognised for its expertise in cloud, database and Microsoft & Oracle application management services. With offerings that complement and broaden Claranet’s existing service portfolio, Echiron is a natural partner for Claranet. Echiron has 90 customers across all industry sectors, including BMW Portugal, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (one of the largest private foundations in Europe) and SPMS (Portugal’s centralised health system administration body).

Grita, is a specialist provider of hosting services to the healthcare sector in France, and accredited with the French Ministry of Health’s HADS (Hébergeur Agrée de Données de Santé) certification for the hosting of private medical data. The HADS accreditation, combined with Claranet’s existing ISO 27001 and PCI-DSS certifications, makes the company one of the few hosting providers in France to have this set of key industry accreditations, and extends its reach into this fast-growing market segment. Since entering the healthcare and emerging e-pharmacy markets in 2010, Grita has become a leading player – with over 50 major customers in the sector, including Philips and Agfa.

The acquisition of NovaData, which has annual revenues of €7 million (£5.7 million), strengthens Claranet’s position as the leading provider of managed hosting and application management services in The Netherlands. Founded in 2008 and located in Eindhoven, NovaData is an IT services firm focused on mid-sized and large businesses and institutions. With a range of services that broaden and complement Claranet’s existing portfolio, NovaData is a natural partner for Claranet. It means that customers in the region will benefit from the expertise of both companies and from a combined and expanded services portfolio. NovaData’s customer base comes from a wide range of industry sectors such as healthcare, business services and manufacturing.

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